


Myself I Embrace

by EverySoul



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence, F/F, Internalized Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28510287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverySoul/pseuds/EverySoul
Summary: Shallan Davar's reflection was not her own.
Relationships: Shallan Davar/Veil
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	Myself I Embrace

**Author's Note:**

> Tags of lesser importance: Adolin/Kaladin (implied), Shallan/Jasnah (one-sided), Shallan/Tyn (one-sided), Shallan/Iyatil (one-sided), I Think Shallan Davar is a Lesbian, Pattern is Best Wingspren, Shallan Has Strange Ideas About Gender Roles, Gay-Centric Semi-Nonsexual Throuple, I Don't Know If Comphet Is a Thing in Roshar But It Sure Reads Like It, Existential Confusion and Sexuality Crises are the Same, Right?, Tag For Exposed Safehands
> 
> Takes place sometime between WoR and Oathbringer. At this point it's become rather radically divergent from canon in terms of both what's going on in Shallan's life and how she relates to Veil, but I work with what I've got.

Shallan Davar's reflection was not her own.

It had taken her a while to notice it, because her surroundings were strange to begin with when she woke up. Her bed in Urithiru wasn't nearly as comfortable as the one back in the warcamp, and Urithiru overall gave off a distinct air of being somewhere that didn't entirely want her there, with its labyrinthine towers and halls. It was a distracting kind of city.

So it had really been very understandable that she woke up and dressed herself without incident, sliding on her dress and buttoning the requisite several thousand buttons to make herself presentable, all without paying attention to the tall mirror she'd had placed in her quarters for the exact purpose she was not using it for. She could have done that with one hand tied behind her back— and she reflected, as she buttoned up her safehand, that she sort of was.

It was only when she caught her eyes to arrange her hair for the day that she realized that the eyes she was catching were dark, the hair she was combing was darker.

Veil was standing in the mirror across from her.

She was dressed very differently to Shallan. Her hair was still loose, but looking at it carefully, it had been cut strangely short, swaying gently around her shoulders. She wore a— She wore a _uniform_ , like one of the bridgemen or soldiers, stiff jacket and trousers and tunic that was open to a scandalous degree. Shallan briefly reached up to her own chest, relieved when she was able to reassure herself that she wasn't quite so...exposed.

The relief turned to a faint horror when she realized a fundamental fact about Veil.

Like any reflection, Veil was reversed left-to-right. Shallan had placed her freehand to her chest, which meant that Veil had placed her safehand to her chest, and it was very much uncovered. It shouldn't have bothered her. Shallan had seen her own safehand plenty of times upon waking up or going to bed.

She found herself blushing.

She noted, absently, that for all the heat rising in her cheeks, there was no sign of the same in Veil's face. The other her regarded her with no real change in expression.

"Pattern?" she called out. "Are you doing this?"

"No, no…" came a quick response from somewhere under her bed.

"Really?"

Dead silence. Stupid question, really.

Maybe Shallan was doing this subconsciously? But she hadn't even drawn in Stormlight. She tried _exhaling_ Stormlight, to see if she'd done it accidentally, but nothing changed. Veil let out a quiet little breath. The mirror fogged— Shallan had gotten close to it, and she wiped the condensation away with the sleeve of her safehand.

Which, of course, meant that Veil reached out with her freehand. Also uncovered. Where their hands met, Shallan almost could have sworn that she felt something, real and alive and warm even through her sleeve.

She jerked her hand back, and Veil did the same, and for just a moment, it looked like Veil had moved fractionally more slowly, more casually.

"Pattern!"

"Speak truth," said Pattern, and offered no further commentary on the situation.

So Shallan was left to stare at herself— at Veil— in the mirror, and contemplate her own burgeoning insanity.

It was a familiar enough experience for her, of course, and one with a familiar enough solution. She could close her eyes briefly— when she opened them, Veil was still there, because why should things just randomly work out for her— and she could leave the room to go find Adolin or Kaladin, not tell them any part of what had just happened, and go about her day and her life without further incident.

She made to do just that, and then she stopped.

Shallan Davar had never enjoyed looking at herself in the mirror. Her hair was odd, her freckles too self-evident, and especially among the Alethi, she stood out, and not for the better. The fact that men could look at her, find her attractive, it had always felt incongruous to her. She could still remember Kabsal, and even if everything about his intentions had been a ruse, her remembered reaction to it stood out in sharp, painful clarity.

Veil was...different. Even with her impropriety of dress, maybe because of it, she looked like…

Shallan had seen other women effortlessly embody that sort of beauty that she'd envied, grace and confidence and poise. She'd seen it in Jasnah, of course, and her heart ached when she remembered the other woman. She'd seen it, in another way, in Tyn's casual smooth insouciance. Even Iyatil in her quiet menace, she was forced to admit, had those qualities that Shallan herself had lacked.

For the first time she could remember, looking at Veil in the mirror, Shallan could see the possibility of them in herself. It seemed natural that someone could find Veil attractive. That even Shallan could find Veil attractive. Shallan found that she didn't want to look away just yet.

She breathed in and out, and watched the rise and fall of her chest— or was it Veil's?— the shift of collarbones under skin, the slight movement of her—

Oh, storms, what was she doing? She was staring at herself in the mirror, or something very like herself, with...nothing short of lechery! She could feel her face warming again.

But Veil, being a reflection, gave no sign of particular notice. Veil's eyes, Shallan was forced to acknowledge, would go wherever Shallan's eyes went, which meant that right now, Veil's eyes were fixed directly on—

This was ridiculous. It was her reflection. It couldn't ogle her any more than she could ogle it.

Which meant it was okay, she decided, if she spent a little longer just watching.

She could feel herself, for just a moment, smiling.

Veil smiled back, and winked.

Shallan yelped, and sat down hard on her bed. Veil moved, too, but she didn't sit. Instead, her posture shifted. Only subtly, but it was a shift from careful gentility to an almost masculine slouch, like Tyn had worn. In that subtle shift, Veil abandoned any pretense of being Shallan's reflection.

"We should probably talk," said Veil, and really abandoned that pretense.

" _Pattern,_ " Shallan ground out.

"Speak truths!" insisted the spren.

"What truths am I supposed to speak here?" Shallan demanded, less of Pattern than of the room as a whole. "There aren't exactly a lot of options when I'm alone. Maybe 'I'd like my reflection back so I can make sure my hair is acceptable'?"

"You look fine," Veil said idly.

Shallan rounded on her reflection— on Veil. "Shut up. You're not real."

Veil put her (exposed, Shallan remembered, blushing) safehand to her face in what Shallan was able to instantly recognize as mock offense. "I'm not? How do you know you're not the reflection of me, Shallan?"

Shallan was going to stick with the obvious answer, that a lifetime of experience had demonstrated exactly that, but something in her made her hesitate. Something in Veil, rather, that echo of Jasnah that reminded her that she couldn't simply rely on what she believed. She grasped for evidence, then. "Pattern is here. He's not in your world."

Pattern zipped past her, spreading out along and through the surface of the mirror, until he sprawled across Veil's bed.

"...You're not helping, Pattern."

"True," said Pattern delightedly, "but not truth."

"You're never going to prove anything if you can't come up with a backup argument," Veil drawled, sounding so much like Tyn that every part of Shallan felt suddenly turned on end. "I'm real, Shallan. I'm you. You could be me, if you wanted. You're a Lightweaver. You could be _anything_."

Against her better judgement, Shallan's eyes flicked up and down Veil. "I don't think I agree."

"The ship didn't think it could be water. The stick didn't think it could be fire. When will you understand, Shallan, that it's not thinking that gets us into these messes?"

"What mess are we," Shallan placed delicate stress on the word, to emphasize the sheer sarcasm inherent in acknowledging Veil's presence as anything more than a hallucination, "in? Besides the obvious, of course, which clearly could have been avoided if I'd been...more willing to play dress-up?"

"Finally, a real question," Veil proclaimed. "What about Adolin? Kaladin?"

Shallan sputtered. "That's none of your business!"

"Really?" Veil asked. "Because if I'm only a fragment of your crumbling sanity, then it's entirely my business, what with my being you and all. Surely, if you want me to butt out of _your_ ," the same delicate stress on the word, "personal affairs, the quickest way to make it happen would be to admit that I am, in some way, separate from yourself, so as to justifiably claim that I have no call in meddling."

Shallan sputtered further. "Well...I _feel_ real."

"And so do I," Veil said mildly. "I suspect you are real, of course. But I don't see any reason for you to be so quick to assume I'm not."

Shallan couldn't come up with a counterargument that wasn't entirely juvenile, so she settled for crossing her arms. Veil, by contrast, laced her fingers together in front of her stomach, and Shallan was reminded for the third time that Veil left her safehand exposed.

"If you're real—" Shallan started, and trailed off when she realized that the presupposition of her request was inherently damning.

"If I'm real, couldn't I cover up?" Veil asked.

"Yes," said Shallan, blushing furiously.

"I'm afraid you've left me no clothes," Veil said melodramatically, placing the back of her freehand up to her forehead. "One would almost think that you _like_ me in this outfit."

If Shallan's face got any warmer, steam was going to start coming out of her ears, or maybe she'd Soulcast the room into fire.

When she'd been trapped in the chasm with Kaladin, he'd brought up the notion of her wearing a soldier's uniform. She'd been offended, of course, but the idea had been...persistent. She remembered Tyn, in her semi-masculine garb, with her spicy men's food. Remembered sketching Tyn from Memory, and remembered drawing on those Memories in her creation of Veil.

And Tyn had betrayed her, and Tyn had died, and that made the memory stronger.

"But for the sake of your gentle eyes, I'll do what I can," Veil said, finally. She slipped her safehand under her coat and out of sight, and it became a little easier to look at her. "So have you settled on an answer? Am I something separate from you? Someone? Or am I as justified in asking as you would be when I ask you _what the storm you're doing?_ "

"With _Kaladin_?" Shallan snapped.

"Yes, with _Kaladin_ ," Veil snapped back. "Oh, sure, he's dashing. Witty. He's maybe the only person we know who can talk circles around us. But we both know he's not what you want."

"Of course he's not," Shallan said primly. "I'm engaged to Adolin."

Veil snorted. "Yeah. And you're _so_ in love with him."

"I— I love him!" Shallan hissed, lowering her voice as she acknowledged just how strange it would be if someone overheard however much of this conversation was audible to outside parties.

"True," Pattern admitted, still from Veil's room, "but not truth."

"And what does that mean?" Shallan asked.

"Speak _truth_ ," Pattern said firmly.

"You keep saying that!" Shallan cried. "How am I supposed to speak truth if nobody's willing to tell me what truth is?"

"You're whining, Shallan," Veil said. "It's not that impressive. What would Jasnah think, if she saw you like this?"

Shallan wanted very much to hide under the covers and go back to sleep, but if she turned her back on Veil now, it would be losing the argument.

Besides, Veil was right. Jasnah wouldn't be impressed by this. And Jasnah was dead, which made it all the more important that Shallan show some respect for her legacy.

She'd solved the puzzle of Urithiru. She'd awakened herself as a Lightweaver, survived the chasms and the highstorm and the everstorm and courting some man she'd now known for less than a year. She could deal with one argument with her more-attractive mirror self and an intransigent spren.

"You said I'm not thinking," Shallan said, slowly. "About Adolin."

Veil raised an eyebrow.

"Why did you say that? Can I ask that, or is that not the rules of this little game we're playing?"

Veil smiled, lazy and wicked. "You're learning."

"You know something I don't, then?" Shallan asked.

"I know what you know," Veil said, grin widening. "But I know it in a way you don't, and that's sometimes not that different from knowing something you don't."

"And why is that?"

"Because I'm not afraid to believe it," Veil said, quietly, and her grin vanished, replaced by a look of utter pity.

Shallan flinched.

Veil sat down on her bed, ushering Pattern out of the way. The spren slid back out of the mirror easily, resting at Shallan's feet, and Shallan looked down at him, because she suddenly couldn't bring herself to look at Veil.

"The last time you saw things that you thought weren't real," Veil said, still quietly and sincerely, "it turned out you were a Lightweaver. It turned out that you were hiding from the truth about yourself."

"And that's what's happening now?"

"It seems likely, doesn't it?" Veil said. "You need me, Shallan, and now I'm here. What is it you need me for?" Her voice was lower than Shallan's, Shallan suddenly acknowledged, though whether that was an affectation or a physical quality Shallan couldn't tell. And it was full of emotion, a deep, almost painful gentleness. It sent prickles down her spine, and she could feel gooseflesh on her arms.

"You mentioned Adolin," Shallan said. "That Adolin's what we're dealing with. But everything with him is fine." Well, he'd been fairly badly injured, but everything between the two of them was fine. "Better than ever, actually." Her voice felt a little hollow. "We're doing quite well."

"Hm," said Veil politely, dismissively. "And that makes you happy?"

Shallan wasn't happy, but that had had nothing to do with Adolin and everything to do with herself. Her stare down at Pattern turned to a glare, and the spren darted out from under her feet, leaving her staring at blank floor. "I think so. It's hard to be happy right now."

"We were always told that love would make us happy," Veil said quietly.

Shallan snapped her head up, turning her glare onto Veil. "You weren't told that. You weren't there. You didn't exist until I needed you—" _to meet the Ghostbloods_ , her mind said, but her mouth wouldn't finish the sentence.

"Truth," said Pattern.

Veil's face had fallen, even the pity on her face giving way to sadness. Shallan couldn't picture Jasnah, or Tyn, or Iyatil ever looking so sad. The part of Veil that was capable of that was all Shallan.

"Sorry," Shallan said, surprised to find both that she was apologizing to her own reflection and that she meant it.

"It's alright," Veil said softly. "You're right. Insofar as the two of us could be separate, you were there, and I wasn't. I haven't suffered what you've suffered. If I can be less afraid than you, it's only because I've had different opportunities."

Shallan breathed around what felt like a knot in her stomach. "I'm not afraid."

"Lie," said Pattern, and Shallan's heart dropped out of her chest.

"But could be truth, if you wanted. If you made it truth."

And that was what she'd done. Veil, sitting across from her with only a pane of glass between them, was a Shallan Davar unafraid.

And she looked like _that_.

Shallan's breath was catching, each inhalation feeling strained, each exhalation almost too strong. Her face burned with warmth, and she was certain that anyone looking would assume she was having some kind of apoplectic fit.

"What is it you're afraid of?" Veil asked.

"I'm afraid that we're all going to die any day now," Shallan said, the first thing that jumped to mind.

"True, but not truth," Pattern said, predictably.

"Me too," Veil admitted. "But you've always been willing to jump to the quickest retort, rather than the most _true_ one. It's what holds us back from being a good Soulcaster, I think."

"I think I'm not a bad Soulcaster."

"You're a fantastic Lightweaver," Veil said. "Because you're a fantastic liar. You can make the world look like anything, because you're _ just that good _at convincing yourself of what you want to see. But Soulcasting? How can you claim you understand that, when you can't even make a stick burn? You won't admit truth to yourself."

"You can't lie to yourself," Shallan pointed out.

"You can. Easily. More easily than lying to others," Veil said. "You're a master of it. How else could you have made me? How else could you have forgotten everything you did? Not realized you were a Lightweaver?"

"Don't," Shallan hissed. "Don't— You weren't there. You don't understand what I had to do."

"I do!" Veil said, pleadingly. "Because I know what you know, and I'm not scared of it. I can't tell you you did everything right, because you don't believe it, and I don't think you'd believe me, and I don't understand it enough to give a considered opinion, but I know _you_ , and I know you're lying to yourself now, and I want you to think about _why_!"

Shallan could feel tears threatening. "I'm not."

"Lie," said Pattern.

"I can't stand seeing you like this, Shallan," Veil said.

"Then go away."

"I can't stand it, and I want to help."

Shallan sniffled. "I don't want your help."

"Lie."

Veil raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not afraid of Adolin," Shallan said. "I love him."

"You do," Veil agreed. "He's handsome. He's strong. He's fun. But think about him, think about every moment of happiness and pain you've felt with him, and tell me it's one iota of what you felt around Jasnah."

If Veil had reached out of the mirror and punched Shallan in the stomach, it probably wouldn't have had as strong an effect. "What are you—" she couldn't breathe, suddenly. "What are you talking about?"

Veil pursed her lips.

Shallan's heart hurt like it had snapped in half from sheer strain, as she remembered Jasnah. The moment of meeting her for the first time, like the air had been sucked out of the room. The sheer _gravity_ of the older woman, beyond just beauty, the elation Shallan had taken in her praise and the utter crushing misery of her disappointment. And then that wrenching feeling, seeing Jasnah stabbed, turned to so much meat.

There were tears now. Shallan blinked them away furiously. "Are you implying I felt about Jasnah the way I do about Adolin?"

"Not even close," Veil said.

"She's twice my age, for one."

"Confidence is attractive," Veil said. "Older people are confident. Older women who have been told their whole life to be something they're not, and persisted in asserting selfhood all the same, have more confidence than either of us combined."

"And she's a _woman_ ," Shallan snapped.

"So was Tyn," Veil noted. "Remember Tyn? With her spicy food and her glove, and all her talk of breasts?"

"Tyn was a murderer," Shallan growled.

"And you still liked her, didn't you?"

She'd hated Tyn. Tyn had murdered Jasnah, and nearly murdered Shallan, and she'd made Shallan _worse_. And the most awful thing about all that was that—

That Shallan had found her _fascinating. Enthralling._

She thought about Iyatil, with her trousers. Iyatil, whom she'd mistaken for a boy. How uncomfortable she'd been around the other woman.

How...intrigued.

She thought about Kabsal, and about Adolin and Kaladin, and how terrified she'd been, and how comfortable she was now. She'd never been in love with Kabsal. She'd tried so hard to be, and it hadn't worked at all. With Adolin it was easy, with Kaladin it was rough, but between them, it was fundamentally not difficult—

Because they had each other, too. She didn't mind kissing Adolin, didn't mind looking at him, but it was a moment of fancy. Like laying down on a picnic blanket in the sun, head in the lap of your best friend. But the emotions behind the matter, that was something shared between the three of them.

"I can't," Shallan said. "This is wrong. It's— it's a sin, it must be."

"It's _very_ symmetrical," Veil noted. "I would imagine that's a positive."

Shallan's face must have been the color of her hair. "But Adolin— he'll be so upset—"

"I think he'll get over it," Veil said dryly. "It's kind of his thing. Besides, have you seen how he looks at Kaladin?"

Shallan wasn't sure how she could keep blushing like this. "He's— he's also—"

"You know what they say about men on the plateaus," Veil said. "I notice you're not decrying them as sinners, though. Even though, practically speaking, they would be, given as how you're engaged to one of them."

"It's different," Shallan said, in absence of any better argument.

"Why?"

Shallan struggled to find words. "...I can't. I just can't—"

"You can't be fire, because you're a stick?" Veil asked.

Shallan's voice died.

Veil smiled, wanly, kindly. "You're a Lightweaver. I told you that you can be anything. You can do anything. You can be loved. You can love."

If she just put aside what she thought she _should_ be.

Shallan stood up from the bed, and Veil mirrored her motion, but as Veil, not as a reflection. Shallan breathed in, and this time she drew in Stormlight.

_Anything_.

She stepped closer to the mirror, and Veil stepped closer as well, her stride just slightly longer, more fluid.

"This feels weird," Shallan said.

"Lie," came the mutter from somewhere around her nightstand.

"There's a saying I've heard, and I think I paid more attention to it than you did," Veil murmured, taking a step that Shallan was the one to mirror.

"Love starts with the self."

Shallan stepped forward, and Veil stepped forward and out of the mirror, Stormlight streaming around her as air and light bent into something tangible. Warm.

The kiss was quick, chaste even, a gentle pressure on Shallan's lips. But her freehand landed on Veil's shoulder, and Veil's safehand was at Shallan's waist, fingers finding the small of her back as each pulled the other closer.

Shallan reached out with her safehand, and Veil took it in her freehand, and there was a fiddle of buttons and Shallan could feel Veil's hand on hers, callused and firm, and they were holding each other. There was no symmetry to it, because they were different people, and there was a perfect symmetry to it, because for the first time in her life Shallan felt as though the person in front of her could really be an _other half._

The second kiss was almost a natural extension of the existing intimacy, just the last and best point at which she and Veil could meet. Veil was Stormlight, and Shallan could breathe her, and the kiss took longer than she'd expected. Longer than she'd dared to hope for.

She broke away from Veil, finally, the other woman stepping back into the mirror. Veil's face showed no blush, but her eyes were alive with mischief, and her lips were— Shallan wondered if there was some sort of ceiling to her ability to go red in the face, and if so what sort of Soulcasting she'd used to dig through it.

"Thoughts?" asked Veil, a trace of her original grin returning.

"Storms," murmured Shallan.

"Truth!" came a delighted voice from the ceiling, and Shallan was reminded that she and Veil weren't alone.

"Pattern—" Shallan gasped for breath, and found that breathlessness no longer painful. "Really. How did you do this?"

"He didn't," Veil said. "You did. We did."

"Why? How?"

"Because, Shallan," Veil said, with a radiant smile. "You deserve truth. You deserve love."

And Shallan exhaled, and she blinked, and her reflection was Shallan again. Red hair, light blue eyes, pale skin currently flushed blotchy red from her forehead to her chest. Buttons undone at her safehand and at her collarbone. Smiling so widely that her ears hurt.

She let out a faint sigh with the last of her breath, giving herself a moment just to enjoy her reflection.

She did up her buttons again, combed her hair into place, and went to go speak some truths to Adolin.  


**Author's Note:**

> POV: Your cool butch alter ego manifests to tell you you're gay.
> 
> Title is from a line in the John Donne poem "Sappho to Philaenis."
> 
> I have a lot of feelings about Shallan being specifically a lesbian, mostly to do with Sanderson's general inability to write attraction to men, the inherent queerness of the Lightweavers and Soulcasting as concepts, and also basically everything about her reaction when Kabsal confesses to her. Unfortunately there are no other women her age of even vague prominence in the story, so instead this is what happens.


End file.
